Yesterday evening, I had the privilege of attending the Triangle USGBC’s “Talk & Walk” at the Wake County Justice Center. The 576,996 square foot Justice Center was completed 6 months early and over 30 million under budget. (The final cost, including soft costs, came in at ~$141,000,000). Now that’s what I call a LEED project done right!

Interestingly, the County did not endeavor for a LEED Silver rating– the plan was to aim for a Certification. However, as the process unfolded, the Team kept meeting the goals and points for a Silver certification without any appreciable additional costs.

The end result? An “iconic but energy efficient building,” according to Tim Ashby, current Wake County Facilities Project Manager. Tim was initially involved in the Project while working at O’Brien Atkins, which served as the architecture firm for the Project under the direction of Architect Andrew Zwiacher.

The Project was a Construction Manager at Risk project, involving a joint venture between Balfour Beatty Construction and Barnhill Contracting Company. Did the contract type contribute to the success of the Project? According to Project representatives, it likely was responsible for the 6 month early completion due to the high level of coordination.

Energy efficiency in the Building comes from the low flow plumbing (total water savings of 45%, 15% more than LEED requires), programmable and natural daylighting, and almost 98% construction waste diversion.

The large & relaxing Jury waiting room

Another interesting legal factoid: BIM (Building Information Modeling) was utilized. Through BIM, a conflict was discovered in the space allocated for the air handling units versus the planned size of those units. This discovery enabled a change to the AHU units (to make them wider and shorter) prior to manufacturer, saving untold delays in time and increases in cost. We’ll talk more later about the pros (and cons) of BIM, but suffice it to say it worked very well on this Project.

If you haven’t been by to see the Justice Center yet, please do. It’s a great design (17 elevators!), and a great change from the old Courthouse across the street.

Have you seen the Justice Center yet? Thoughts on the design? Share in the comments below.